ואלה שמות, seeing that the Torah wanted to let us know how the Israelites had increased and multiplied (verse 3) it became necessary to repeat that when they had arrived in Egypt they had numbered only 70 souls. The dramatic increase in numbers of Israelites began only with the death of the generation that had moved there from the land of Canaan. As a result, when a new king came to the throne in Egypt, he wanted to diminish their numbers and did not succeed in doing so.

וכל הדור ההוא, the seventy souls mentioned.

פרו, the number of pregnancies;

וירבו, the number of births. All the infants born grew up healthy, there were no deaths of children as could normally be expected.

ויעצמו, they did not even die in early adulthood, but they were all healthy specimens. במאד מאד, until the whole country became full of them, ותמלא הארץ אותם. The Torah describes a perception of fullness, much as Ezekiel 10,4 describing והחצר מלאה את נוגה כבוד ה', “the inner courtyard was filled with the glow of the Glory of Hashem.” This was a perception, not something tangible. Similarly, Isaiah 6,1 ושוליו מלאים את ההיכל, “and its skirts filled the Sanctuary.”

נתחכמה לו, so that they will not increase further. In the event that they would continue to multiply and a war should break out between us and our enemies. The construction here is just as in Judges 5,26 ידה ליתד תשלחנה, “her left hand reached for the tent pin”. The word תשלחנה is in the plural mode although Devorah speaks of Yael using a single hand to do this. In our verse too the word תקראנה is unaccountably in the plural mode.

כי תקראנה, as if the Torah had written כי תארענה, “if it were to happen.”

ונלחם בנו ועלה מן הארץ, in order to return to the land of their ancestors. It would be disastrous for us to lose this source of cheap manpower. If that were to happen my kingdom would be an emaciated kingdom. [Pharaoh speaking of his loss of “face,” if he would allow the Jews to escape although they were also a great source of frustration. Ed.]

מיסים, typically one of the words with double consonants, the singular being מס and the plural requiring a dagesh in the letter ס to show there really ought to have been two letters ס in the middle. Similar examples are found in Leviticus 2,6 where the line פתות אותה פתים is spelled with the dagesh in the letter ת of the word פתים as being derived from פת it would require two such consonants in the plural.

מסכנות, storages. You find the word as סוכן in the singular mode, in the same sense in Isaiah 22,15.

כן ירבה; the measures the Egyptians took to slow down the Jewish birthrate not only did not work but backfired.

ויקוצו, they became frustrated with their own lives when watching the development of the Israelites. This expression for frustration with one’s own life has already been used when Rivkah could not bear thinking about Yaakov marrying a Canaanite girl. (Genesis 27,46) It also occurs in a similar sense in Isaiah 7,16.

בפרך. An expression related to breaking something, The treatment of the Israelites was intended to break them mentally and physically. In the Talmud the term is used to describe the cracking of the outer shell of walnuts. (Beytzah 12)

ובכל עבודה בשדה, ploughing and harvesting.

את כל עבודתם, in addition to all their other work.

אשר עבדו בהם, inside the city בפרך, all of it under the most intolerable conditions.

למילדות העבריות; the ones who were Jewish.

על האבנים; on the birth-chair. We encounter this expression משבר meaning birth-chair in Kings II 19,3 באו בנים עד המשבר, “the babes have reached the birth-stool.” The expression אבנים also occurs in Jeremiah 18,3 where it describes a tool similar to round millstones.

וחיה. The stress is on the first syllable, just as in shavah from shav. We encounter the use of this term in Genesis 11,12 where the Torah, when telling us about the age of Arpachshad when he sired children, writes: ארפכשד חי, ”Arpachshad had lived, etc.” The parallel construction in the feminine mode is chayah. However, in a verse in Kohelet 6,6 אילו חיה אלף שנים, “if he were to live for 1000 years,” the stress is on the last syllable of the word chayah and is in the masculine mode, just like עשה or עלה, which being verbal modes are in the masculine mode, the letter ה at the end notwithstanding.

ותיראנה, meaning “they feared, revered.” If the word had been spelled without the letter י it would be a derivative of ראה, to see. It appears in that mode in Exodus 2,6.

ותחיין, there is no difference in meaning if the form of the past tense as a future with the letter ו in front is used or if the Torah had used a regular past tense such as והחיו את הילדים.

כי חיות הנה, “healthy, alert and the birthing process proceeds smoothly and quickly.”

.ויעש להם בתים. A form of house arrest, to prevent them from attending Jewish women about to give birth.

ויצו פרעה לכל עמו לאמר, the meaning of the line is: “and this is what he said to them.” Every time the word לאמר occurs in the Torah it implies a repetition of words spoken which had been introduced either with the word ויצו or ויקרא, or וידבר, or ויאמר as we explained in connection with Genesis 8,15.